Invite Legislators to Your School Library

Thanks to Beth for the great reminder we have to make sure our legislatorsat the national level understand the importance of school librarians. AASLPresident Audrey Church made a challenge to all school librarians this weekto invite legislators to your school library during this upcoming recess.April is National School Library Month, so its the perfect time! Even ifthey don't come, just the invitation helps to put school libraries on theirradar. You can find her challenge and directions for tracking theinvitations at the KQ blog: http://knowledgequest.aasl.org/invite-legislator-library/

Let's make sure all 100 Senators and 435 Representatives get an invite!

Carl's reference is to Beth Yoke of YALSA who wrote:

By now, we hope you’ve already contacted your members of Congress to tellthem to oppose the elimination of IMLS. If you haven’t, read the detailsin my March 16 blog post<http://yalsa.ala.org/blog /2017/03/16/how-you-can-save-federal-funding-for-libraries-help-teens/>and take action. Here’s what you can do next: invite one of yourRepresentatives or Senators to visit your library, or bring some of yourteen patrons and library advocates to the Congressperson’s local office tomeet with them, so your elected official can see up close and in person themany ways that libraries, with support from IMLS, help students. Congresswill be on break from April 8th through April 23rd. This is the perfecttime to extend the invitation to visit or schedule a meeting. If you’venever done this before, don’t sweat it. YALSA’s District Days wiki page<http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/District_Days> has everything youneed to extend an invitation and plan a great visit or meeting. Whenyou’re visiting their local office, or showing them around your library, besure to talk about the ways that your students benefit from resourcesfunded by IMLS. To find out how your library benefits from IMLS, visittheir State Profiles page<https://www.imls.gov/grants/grants-state/state-profiles>, and read up about how IMLS funds are used in your state.